Red Cent, page 2
part #2 of Jake Hatch Series
"To see nobody steals the body, I suppose."
"That's good," I said. "You're making jokes. This your first homicide?"
"Oh, no, I've seen others, but not when what's in a person's head is splashed all over the walls."
"Not a pretty sight," I agreed.
The door to the dining car opened at the end nearest where we stood.
"I guess I better go do it," I said.
"I guess," he said and made a face.
I climbed the steps and showed my wallet to the sheriff sergeant standing there.
"How's Silas Spinks?" he asked.
"Mean as ever."
"You ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be."
He moved back a step, flattening himself against the open door and letting me go in past him.
You'd never believe how much blood and brain matter is contained in a human head until you see it splattered all over a fairly confined space. The walls and the windows opposite the place where he'd been sitting looked like that artist, Jackson Pollack, had lost all his colors except red and gray. One window, though, had been blown out altogether.
The dead man was lying on his side on the floor as though he'd just tipped over and fallen there all curled up in a sitting position. The top of his head was gone and I knew the right side of his face was gone, too. He was wearing a dark blue pinstripe, black socks with maroon clocks, and black slip-ons. The cuff of his shirt showing at the wrist of one outflung arm was blue. He was lying on his tie.
A man I supposed was the medical examiner was leaning a hip on a table and staring at me, waiting to see if I'd lose my dinner.
I smiled at him and said, "Doctor?"
"Boulanger."
"My name's Jake Hatch. I'm a detective for the Burlington Northern working out of Omaha."
"We've been waiting for you."
"I thank you for it, but you didn't have to. I could've come to you."
He shrugged and said, "Well," accepting my remark as thanks, "I thought I'd save you the trip to Des Moines."
"I don't have to ask what killed him. I can see. What was the caliber of the bullet?"
"Don't know. A shot like that right here"—he tapped the middle of his forehead—"can pop the skull like a melon."
"I can see that. I was thinking somebody might've found the slug."
"Busted out the window on the other side."
I looked where he was pointing, though I'd already noticed it, and then I looked at Atterbury.
"First light in the morning I'll have men out there combing the right-of-way," he said.
"Needle in a haystack. Good luck."
"We'll do what we can do."
I glanced over at another table where a small pile of things a man would carry in his pockets were piled. A money clip, some coins, ring of keys, handkerchief, silver pocketknife, comb, billfold, thin calculator, and a purple plush ring box.
"Can I look?"
"Go ahead, help yourself."
I touched the money clip.
"Two hundred twenty-six dollars," Atterbury said. "Man's name is Harold Chaney."
"Oh?"
"Ring a bell?"
"Don't I see the name around?"
"If you ride the trains, and I guess you ride them plenty, you probably noticed the signs on factories along the line this side of Denver."
"Chaney Enterprises. Sure. Big business. Where was he coming from?"
"Chicago."
"Wonder why a man that rich don't fly."
"Afraid of planes, maybe."
Somebody way back in the far corner of the car cleared his throat. Sam Franklin, a dining car attendant I'd known for years, was sitting in the shadows in his red jacket.
"Hello, Mr. Franklin," I said. "What're you doing here?"
"They left me with the car."
"What the hell they do that for?"
"I haven't got the foggiest."
"The train had to go ahead," Atterbury said. "I guess they thought they should leave somebody to represent the company."
"Hear that, Sam? You're representing the company."
"I'd sooner be at home, Jake," Sam replied.
"Me too. So we're both here, how about you tell me what happened?"
He got up and came over to sit down in a chair closer to me. I took one facing.
"There's hot coffee on the sideboard," Sam said.
"I've had sufficient for the night. Be up till all hours as it is. So what time did it happen?"
"I'd say eight-thirty, eight-forty. Train was running an hour late but dinner service was as usual. I wanted to say that Mr. Chaney wasn't afraid of planes. He flew to Europe and Asia all the time. He just loved trains. Anytime business took him anywhere along the line he'd grab the chance to ride the train."
"You knew him pretty good?" Atterbury asked, as though accusing Sam of withholding information.
"As good as a waiter gets to know somebody he waits on as many times as I waited on Mr. Chaney."
"So he was a train buff?" I asked.
"I don't know was he an enthusiast. Just he said he loved riding the trains. Said he was afraid all this modern technology would wreck the railroads sooner or later."
"What happened during dinner?"
"Somebody made a remark about a bunch of crazy kids racing the train alongside the tracks. I took a look. There were maybe five or six of them in two pickups driving through the tulles."
"Could you see faces?"
Sam shook his head and said no.
"Then what?"
"I went on about my business. I was back in the galley when I heard the pops."
"Rifle shots?"
"I guess that's what they were. Somebody even said, 'My God, those crazy people are shooting at us,' and somebody else said, 'They must be drunk,' and somebody else asked, 'Can they hit us?' and then—"
I reached out and patted his hand. "Take it easy. Take your time."
"It's getting harder to talk about it."
"Maybe you got a little shock setting in."
"I'll give him some tranquilizers to take home with him," Boulanger said. "He might have some nightmares."
"I'm not used to such things, Jake," Sam said.
"Neither am I. Whenever you're ready, Sam."
"It was right after whoever it was asked could they hit us when Mr. Chaney's head blew up and he fell on the floor."
"Okay, okay. Is it all right with everybody if Sam goes home?"
"I live back in Chicago," Sam said, with a rueful twist to his mouth.
"You already call your wife?"
He nodded.
"Well, call her again and tell her we're putting you up at a hotel here in Osceola. You can take the eastbound tomorrow. What time?"
"Nine o'clock in the morning."
"So, that's good. You'll get a night's sleep. I'll arrange with the front office for you to have three days off."
"Thank you, Mr. Hatch," he said, getting to his feet.
"You're welcome, Mr. Franklin," I said, getting to mine.
He looked down at the man he'd served so many times.
"The Lord only knows," he said.
"Amen," Atterbury and I said together.
"Can I have a look at that ring box?" I asked.
Atterbury handed it to me and I opened it up. There was an emerald ring in it, must've been four or five carats.
The inside of the band was engraved with two little hearts on either side of the initials "PIP."
"I wonder if somebody was having a birthday," I said.
FOUR
FOR A MAN WHO works for the railroad I drive a car a lot. For a man who loves the railroad I'm forced to drive a car a lot. Maybe that's why medium-haul, city-to-city trains are dying, because we like to have our automobiles parked outside the door so we can come and go at a minute's notice. I have to admit, being tied to a schedule can make some jobs difficult. Like the next morning after I woke up in the hotel closest to the depot. If I took the nine o'clock into Chicago, where Chaney'd lived, I wouldn't be along the right-of-way when the slug was found. If it was found.
Having the company car right there, I decided I could drive back along to Ottumwa and see how the search was going, maybe even lend a hand, even if it made me feel like a traitor.
The search for the bullet had been going on since sunup, but by the time I found the search party along the right-of-way it still hadn't been found. Atterbury was in charge of half a dozen deputies and about the same number of uniforms from Osceola. There were even a few civilians and some boy scouts combing through the trash and weeds along the right-of-way with metal detectors, like they were looking for nickels on the beach.
He shook my hand and we stood there watching the line of men and boys moving along the track close enough so they could touch finger ends if they raised their arms. Every once in a while one of them would squat down and finger something he'd found and then stand up again to keep shuffling along, looking.
"This is the eighth pass," Atterbury said. "I'm about ready to give it up."
"Hard as hell to know when to quit a search like this."
"Well, at least we got some idea of what kind of slug we're looking for. Boulanger took the body to Des Moines last night and, late as it was, ran some tests. Found particles of cupronickel around the entry wound."
"Is there something I should know from that?"
"Boulanger says the English are the only commercial loaders still using cupronickel jacketing."
"Well, that's something, I suppose," I said. "One of these days we could come across somebody with a pocketful of foreign cartridges."
"I won't hold my breath," Atterbury said.
"I was going to give you a hand," I said, "but it doesn't look to me like one more pair of eyes'd do much good."
"Probably no amount of eyes would. Bullet hit the window, then a skull, then a window again. Probably busted up into little bits the size of BBs, the way it blew that window out."
We stood there chewing that one over until Atterbury said, "They caught the kids that done it."
"Kids?"
"Six of them. Ages seventeen through twenty-two or -three. Indians."
"From the Mesquakie Settlement?" I asked.
"They say not. Claim to be just visiting relatives."
"From where?"
"From the Santee Sioux Reservation up along the Dakota border."
"Mesquakie is Sac and Fox. No relative to the Sioux."
"Well, it could still mean the Bureau of Indian Affairs could get into the act." Atterbury didn't look any too pleased about that. It was always a mess when too many agencies of one sort or another started stirring the pot.
"The murder, if that's what it is, didn't occur on the reservation. Maybe it's like a soldier committing a crime off the post."
"They could still be tried in the civil courts."
"Except reservation Indians are under special treaty with the United States government. They're treated like sovereign nations. They've got their own police and their own powers to prosecute and punish. On top of which you say some are underage? Complications."
"Maybe I'm the one who's got the easy part, trying to find some bits of lead along a five-mile right-of-way full of trash."
"I'm not doing any good here," I said.
"Where you off to?"
"Thought I'd drive over to the morgue and have another talk with Boulanger. Then I think I'll look in on those boys in jail. You happen to know where they're keeping them?"
"Indianola, but there's talk of moving them."
"What the hell? Not a bit of this took place in Warren County."
"It's where they were arrested on Route Sixty-five. But, you're right, the shooting took place in Monroe County. If I was you, I'd call first. Otherwise, you're going to be driving all over Iowa."
"I'll do that," I said, and started walking.
I'd walked off about three strides when Atterbury called out to me. I turned around to hear what he had to say.
"What did you mean by what you just said?" Atterbury asked.
"You mean about having another talk with Boulanger?"
"No, about it maybe being murder."
"Well, I don't know yet, but I'm wondering a little about where a bunch of young fellas like them Indians would get their hands on a rifle capable of throwing a slug that'd do that much damage and then disappear out the window."
FIVE
I'M NOT GOING TO describe the morgue in Des Moines. Morgues are morgues, only some are less crowded and cleaner than others.
Boulanger's operation was run tight and clean. You could tell the minute you stepped in the door that nobody was going to end up missing because of carelessness. Nobody's heart or liver was going to be misfiled or tossed in the trash by mistake.
To get to the office Boulanger had chosen for himself you had to walk through the autopsy room. There were no corpses waiting for attention and that was all right with me.
He was sitting behind a pane of glass so he could see what was going on in the laboratory, and he looked up when he heard my heels tapping the tiles.
He half stood up to shake my hand when I walked through the door, then sat right back down again and asked me to do the same.
"Atterbury told me you found cupronickel traces in the entry wound," I said.
"Yes, I did. I don't know if that's any help."
"It would be if we could find it or if we find the rifle loaded with cupronickel-jacketed bullets. You happen to know what kind of cartridges those Indian boys were using?"
"Nothing's been brought to our ballistics yet. Anyway, do you think you can make the case on the evidence of a bullet?"
"It's not my case to make," I said. "It's not even in my hands. I'm just curious about a thing or two."
"Like what?"
"Oh, like is this an accident caused by a bunch of wild kids out hoo-rahing a train or is it a case of murder."
"Murder? For God's sake, Hatch, isn't that reaching for it? We've got a bunch of wild-assed kids with too many beers in them raising a little hell that got way out of hand."
"In my experience," I said, "murder's almost always too much for people to believe. How often do you hear it on the news how some man or boy, after killing off six or seven people, family and friends, is described by everyone who ever knew him as a very mild-mannered, quiet person who liked to read books and take long walks through the woods with his dog? People just can't believe he'd do murder without apparent reason."
"But there's a reason found sooner or later, no matter how crazy it may seem."
"Well, it's early times and I'm not ready to say this is anything but death by misadventure," I said. "How old a man was Mr. Chaney?''
"According to his driver's license he was fifty-eight."
"In good health?"
"Better than most men his age."
The intercom on the desk sounded. Boulanger hit the toggle.
"Mrs. Chaney is here," a woman's voice said.
"I'll be right there," Boulanger replied.
"You going to ask her to make an identification?"
"It's a requirement of the law."
"How you going to handle it? The man's not recognizable."
"I've got his clothes and his personal belongings. I've got a description of marks and scars and a dental chart of crowns and fillings. He had a practically new three-tooth bridge. I'll make it as easy as I can."
"You mind if I come along?"
"I don't see why not."
We stood up.
"I don't think introductions are called for at a time like this," I said.
He nodded and I followed him out through the laboratory to the reception room.
I held back and let Boulanger get up ahead of me when he walked up to the woman, who was standing there with her arms holding herself. She was a good looking woman who looked to be on the low side of forty. But you can't really tell these days. I have a friend, Lula Rippard, looks thirty and she's sixty.
But, forty or whatever, Mrs. Chaney was a thoroughbred. She had the fine bones and the long legs, the deep chest and the glossy mane. If she knew what I was thinking she might've been insulted being described like she was a mare, but I doubt it. I think it would be the kind of appreciation she could understand and enjoy.
She was wearing a greenish-brown tweed suit and brown walking shoes, with a tan topcoat draped over her shoulders. No hat. No furs. No jewelry, that I could see, except for a pin on her lapel and a wedding ring on her finger.
She was giving all her attention to Boulanger as he shook her hand, then held it as he explained the procedure. Only once did she give me a glance. I could see she was wondering who I might be, but wouldn't ask.
There was a man in, I'd say, his late thirties, who'd been sitting down when we walked in, but who'd stood up and was standing beside Mrs. Chaney now with his arm around her shoulders as though ready to steady her if she needed it. She acted like she didn't know he was there.
She nodded her head once and said, "I understand," and then disengaged herself from the man's arm. "You wait here, Lewis."
"Are you sure, Florence?"
She patted his hand as though he was the one needing comfort and said she was sure.
Boulanger held the door to the viewing room for her but let me follow him in by a step or two.
There was a table in the middle of the small room, which had one wall of glass that looked out onto the laboratory just like Boulanger's office did.
The attendant at the desk, who'd left when we appeared, had gone to get Harold Chaney's things. He was standing on the other side of the glass now, waiting in case anything more was wanted.
There was an official folder and Chaney's belongings set out neatly in a row. Boulanger picked up the file and opened it.
"Is this what I'm to identify?" Mrs. Chaney asked. Her voice was sweet and husky, as though she'd been crying a good deal and had worn it out.
"If you can first identify these personal effects and then corroborate medical evidence I'll enumerate, I think we can spare you having to view the body."
She looked at him with the levelest gaze I'd seen in a long time, thinking over what he'd said.
"What sort of medical evidence?"
"Did your husband have an appendectomy scar?"
